


horizon's waltz

by losebetter



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Custom Commander Shepard, Early Mornings, M/M, Paragon Commander Shepard, Recovery, i honestly couldn't tell you., post-ME3, with a happy ending tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 12:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7221706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losebetter/pseuds/losebetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The salarian blinks at him, a twist above his eyes that tells Shepard he’s stumbled into the man’s sympathies again. It’s reassuring in its own way, and terrifying as hell.</p><p><i>You are a sentinel</i>, he tells Shepard - not a condemnation. Shepard slouches, lets his loose curls fall over his hands as he rests his face in his palms, barely holding together. <i>You watch over them instead of sleeping.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	horizon's waltz

**Author's Note:**

> i started this fic a while ago, and didn't really have any plans to share it - but i was hacking away at it again recently and it suddenly passed 1k before it felt finished, so i figured i might as well go for it. :,) in the interest of not being too afraid to post more fic, i suppose? uhh, hurm. anyway.
> 
> this fic features a custom shepard, and although he isn't ever mentioned by name, he differs enough from dear sheploo that i figure it's worth the warning. his name is saintly, and he has a tag on my blog [right here](http://losebetter.tumblr.com/tagged/saintly+shepard) \- but to make things easier, [this](http://66.media.tumblr.com/056924f5ccda9771b6d73e664d1b0525/tumblr_o80dpfloV61uopznto1_1280.png) is what he looked like during the events of ME3. cheers!

Retirement doesn’t suit Shepard. His fingers itch, his leg heavy with meaning where it isn’t with tech - salarian design, quarian execution, asari implementation, Joker’s sentimental paint job. Hundreds of hours of work that he’d spent laid up while his body forced itself to remember how to heal all over again.

He thinks, muzzily, _humans were never meant to live this long_.

_Don’t leave me behind_ , he hears in his head, the memory cracked through. He takes his clean fingers and rides the blunt nails in along his metal kneecap, a bad habit. They haven’t stopped itching with dried blood Shepard knows had flaked off long ago.

The New Citadel is quiet outside his sweeping bay window. Oh four-hundred is early, even for him, but he stares down into his coffee mug, feels the weight of his eyelids. Doesn’t let himself consider sleep, taps his fingertips together because they’re not touching Kaidan’s warm skin and he has to remember that there’s a point to them other than that, that they still function.

He drags himself to the piano bench, fingers hovering over the keys. He doesn’t play anything, wary of the tremble he can feel through his forearms, the ghost touch of the ivory against his unsteady fingertips.

Shepard takes in a breath, a slow gasp that eats his lungs, and he reaches for the wooden cover to the keys, slides it into place, and rests his elbows on it. Not being able to see the keys he isn’t touching almost helps, but - his head aches, heavy with the muted city outside, with everyone returning home so late at night, going to sleep in their beds. His own bed waits across the apartment, his spot next to Kaidan surely still warm. He’s too afraid to go back.

_Sometimes it feels like I’m the only person left in this entire galaxy who still remembers_ , he tells his therapist - a salarian with wits like a whipcrack who reminds him of Mordin.

_And this upsets you? Makes you jealous?_

Shepard swallows. _No. My heart breaks for them - I want to protect them. I hope anyone who doesn’t know, who forgot, never learns or remembers. I - I want this secret, to, to die with me._

The salarian blinks at him, a twist above his eyes that tells Shepard he’s stumbled into the man’s sympathies again. It’s reassuring in its own way, and terrifying as hell.

_You are a sentinel_ , he tells Shepard - not a condemnation. Shepard slouches, lets his loose curls fall over his hands as he rests his face in his palms, barely holding together. _You watch over them instead of sleeping._

It takes Shepard a moment, trembling fingers against his forehead. The tension of held-back tears makes his leg ache, like tepid weather.

_Yes_.

_You get asked all the time if you are okay. By me, especially,_ the salarian says, enough steps ahead that Shepard breathes, once. _Not about asking. Not even who asks. But, how can you answer with the weight of a war behind you?_

Shepard’s breakdown is quiet. _I’m so tired_ , he admits, like glass shattering, like someone pulling the broken pieces of the Citadel out of him while he slept, and the salarian is noble to ignore the tear tracks down his arms. _How am I still alive?_

At the piano, Shepard’s head is in his hands again, the moment too still, the hall suffocating without the sun, without music to comfort him.

Something bumps his leg. He turns his head just enough to force one eye open over the edge of the piano bench, his breaths shallow. His cat stares balefully up at him, too proud to be ignored.

_You persist._

“What,” he murmurs, and then startles as Siha takes no more invitation than that to vault into his skinny lap, stubborn paws against his sleepwarm thighs. Her tail swats him so he pushes it down to cover her ass, and suddenly he’s petting her with both hands, her purr insistent against his stomach. Sneaky of her.

_You persist, because you were asked to._

_Is that all?_

_It’s not enough?_

“You’re a royal pain,” Shepard grumps, and Siha effectively ignores him, marble eyes trained outside.

“We could’ve gotten a dog,” Kaidan counters from the doorway, his voice soft enough to turn the hard edges of the city into a dream instead of a nightmare.

Shepard’s mouth twitches. “Impossible. She chose us - and you like the challenge,” he says automatically, and when he turns to face Kaidan he notices his abandoned mug in his larger hands, steaming now even though he hadn’t heard the microwave. “Morning.”

_Be careful,_ in Kaidan’s voice.

“You should’ve gotten me up,” Kaidan offers, voice breaking off into a huge yawn. He pads closer, sets the mug on top of the piano, and leans down to rest his cheek against the crown of Shepard’s head, pushing through persistent curls. The touch is grounding, and Shepard feels the strain on his heart loosen just slightly. The part of him that is so physically attached to the sunrise that darkness chokes him, the part that guards the sun while it rests, eases.

It’s still an early morning, but not an unkind one.

“You looked peaceful,” Shepard confesses, because the Hero of the Citadel isn’t the only one with scars, not by a long shot. He takes up his coffee again with one hand, his other still attending to the belligerent cat on his lap.

Kaidan hums against his head, sleepy and affectionate. His next breath pushes a shorter curl down over Shepard’s forehead.

“Well, that’s what happens when a guy gets to fall asleep and wake up with the love of his life.”

Shepard’s eyebrows draw in even as the back of his neck goes hot. “Then I’m doubly sorry. Didn’t mean for you to wake up to an empty bed.”

Kaidan rests his arms over Shepard’s shoulders then, and down over his chest in a loose hug. He presses a kiss to his hairline from behind. “Nothing to forgive,” he murmurs. “I know you.” It sounds even more like _I love you_ than ‘love of his life’ had, and Shepard shivers and leans back against him.

“I know you too,” he parrots quietly, and reaches back for Kaidan’s hip with one hand, just to touch. “And it was the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Kaidan chuckles and they leave it at that for a moment, until Kaidan pulls away to head back toward the kitchen, apparently content to start the day early. Shepard knows that means he’ll need a nap later on in the day - they probably both will - but it’s comforting all the same, the company, the familiar sounds of Kaidan fiddling with the oven, taking out a pan to make breakfast.

Shepard takes in a breath, the lonely city encroaching a little less with Kaidan’s lingering warmth. He lifts the cover off the piano keys.

The movement apparently spooks Siha, who bolts - but Kaidan’s cooing starts up a few seconds later, giving away her position.

“She knows you have food,” Shepard calls, unnecessarily. He’s eyeing the keys under his fingertips like a challenge - he doesn’t know what any of them are called, even, written music still beyond him, but he knows this, understands the feeling and the slide of them against his fingers.

“But she still can’t figure out that it’s not for her,” Kaidan replies, and Siha’s affronted meow makes him laugh, something about it all so domestic, so much the core of Shepard’s life, now, even just out of frame as it is.

A low sizzle starts up, the smell of light oil and vegetables and bacon on the air immediately - and once it settles, Shepard can hear Kaidan humming, aimless but easy enough to follow. 

So he does. 

The melody comes easily, and as Kaidan gets distracted Shepard carries the song on, his hands as gentle and sure as the marks hidden on his thighs from Kaidan’s fingers the day before. The flat plate of his right foot is soft on the pedals - his knee still aches, but he plays, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> [siha the cat](http://66.media.tumblr.com/bb4233bbaad8e79f38d20414a05a7b44/tumblr_njvmszg7v61ql2bqio2_1280.jpg) (or her approximation, as it were) is a perfectly spoiled maine coon, for anyone curious.
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](http://losebetter.tumblr.com) \- feel free to drop in and say hello!


End file.
